No More Buses, Portland Urban Life

Here I sit in Bishop’s Parlor while Jo gets a hair styling and I ponder the vast reduction in buses, and transit that Jo and I will experience in the next month or so. You see, we’re moving within 10 blocks of where I work, and where we live most of our lives anyway, downtown Portland. We have lived close for the past year but now we’re returning to where we’ve lived 4 of the last 5 years, downtown. We’re both stoked, Jo is a little hesitant because of all the awesome things she has found out and started to like on the east side of the river. However, now that she knows she doesn’t fear jumping a bus over to that area of town.

However that leads me into a simple fact. Jo and I won’t need to take a bus for a single daily purpose anymore. Grocery store, work, coffee shop, game studio, and a number of other places we always frequent are now within a MAX Light Rail ride or Streetcar ride. Better yet, they’re all within a maximum walk of 25 minutes and most things are within 5-10 minutes. Sure, we’ll still be using the bus enabled part of the system, but for the most part we won’t need to. I wonder how that is going to pan out since we currently live near and use the #9, #4, and #10.

This brings me to another story. As I’m trying to finish up the trip blog entries about the misadventures and such Jo and I enjoyed, I’ve been pondering a friend of ours that is moving back to the city in the next 4-8 months. We’re both stoked. One of the things he always did while here was call everything a bus. The MAX was a bus, the streetcar was a bus, he’s hilarious like that.

We where discussing the various financial and political points of the streetcar vs the buses vs the light rail vs the aerial tram. The two things that drew heat where of course WES and the Tram, but even with costs the streetcar isn’t such a bad deal and does increase the standard of living in the city from various aspects.

But that leads me back to what I was doing before I started rambling, so off I go back to the entries regarding the last few days of our vacation. Peace.